World IPv6 Launch gets 27 percent of pageviews on IPv6

Today, 3,000 websites have made themselves reachable over IPv6 in order to participate in World IPv6 Launch. (Some have enabled IPv6 prior to today.) The 3,000 includes the top four in the Alexa Web ranking: Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Yahoo. Other notable converters include Bing, AOL, Netflix, Comcast, AT&T, Microsoft, NASA, Sprint, the US Geological Survey, Sony Japan, and Porsche.

Last year, many websites also enabled IPv6, but turned the new version of the Internet Protocol off again after 24 hours. After that test flight, the Internet Society and other organizers now deem IPv6 permanently ready for prime time: "the future is forever."

Additionally, a number of Internet Service Providers, such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable, have started enabling IPv6 for their consumers. But unlike publishing an IPv6 address for a website in the Domain Name System, giving broadband customers IPv6 access isn't accomplished with one flick of a switch. This is an ongoing effort. Last but not least, three makers of home routers (Cisco/Linksys, D-Link, and ZyXEL) now have models with IPv6 enabled out of the box available, in order to hook up to the IPv6-ready service of the aforementioned ISPs.

The existing Internet Protocol (IPv4) has 32-bit addresses, allowing for 3.7 billion usable addresses. That sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. For instance, the North American Number Plan allows for 6.4 billion phone numbers for just North America. And your iPod touch and desktop computer don't need a phone number, but they do need an IP address (it is possible to share). IP addresses are similar to phone numbers in that they're given out in large blocks, so unused numbers in Montana can't easily be used in New York. In practice, it's impossible to put every last address into use.

"It is very difficult to predict when IPv4 will run out in the North America," Curran told Ars. "We believe it could occur as early as the middle of 2013."

IPv6 fixes this problem by making the addresses 128 bits long. And just one extra bit means double the addresses. So 96 extra bits really fixes the problem. This is a good thing: the Asia-Pacific region ran out of IPv4 addresses a year ago and in Europe there's only 18 million left under the current rules (with between half a million and one million being used up every week). Daniel Karrenberg, chief scientist at the RIPE NCC, which distributes IP addresses in Europe, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union, predicts that IP addresses will run out in the region around the end of September. North America has a bit more time. "It is very difficult to predict when IPv4 will run out in the North America, as it is based on requests from ISPs for additional space," John Curran, president and CEO of ARIN told Ars (ARIN is the RIPE NCC's counterpart in North America). "At this time we believe it could occur as early as the middle of 2013."

It's no secret that until now, IPv6 adoption has been lackluster to say the least. But today's effort is a big step forward: Alain Fiocco calculates on the Cisco Blog that no less than 27.2 percent of all US-based pageviews can now in principle happen over IPv6. The IPv6 statistics at the Amsterdam Internet Exchange—where many global, regional, and local ISPs exchange traffic—point in the same direction. Until now, IPv6 traffic would peak at around 2 gigabits per second, but today, most of the day saw 3Gbps worth of IPv6 traffic: 0.4 percent of the total AMS-IX traffic.

Of course, 3,000 participants out of millions of websites isn't much. Low, single-digit percentages of IPv6-enabled consumers at maybe two handfuls of ISPs in the US still leaves a lot of work to do until the entire Internet is IPv6-capable and IPv4 can be decommissioned. However, Leslie Daigle, chief Internet technology officer at the Internet Society, expects more organizations to jump on the IPv6 bandwagon in the wake of World IPv6 Launch. "One of the purposes of an activity like this is to give folks a date to shoot for," Daigle told Ars. "While thousands of websites, network operators, and home router vendors are participating in World IPv6 Launch today, we have heard, informally, that some organizations have stepped up their rollout plans and will be deploying IPv6 soon, even if they didn't make today's event. IPv6 is the new normal—we fully expect that IPv6 deployment will continue and simply become part of the normal course of how individuals and organization use the Internet."

In the meantime, current IPv4 networks continue to work as before. Organizations that don't have an immediate need for more IP addresses will be able to continue operating their networks based on IPv4. But ISPs need a continuous flow of fresh IP addresses to hand out to new customers. Ones with high growth have an especially tough decision to make once they run out of IPv4 addresses and new ones are no longer available from ARIN, the RIPE NCC, or APNIC in Asia and the Pacific.

Because 72.8 percent of the pageviews don't support IPv6 yet, giving new customers just IPv6 is not an option at this time. Address trading is a possibility, but certainly not a long-term one. Probably the most attractive option for ISPs that find themselves without enough IPv4 address space is to have multiple customers share a single IPv4 address through Network Address Translation (NAT). ISP-operated NATs are often called Carrier Grade NATs (CGNs).

NAT is already widely used in homes and enterprise networks to share one or a few "real" IPv4 addresses between several or even quite a lot of IP-capable devices. A side-effect of NAT is that incoming connections are no longer possible, but in consumer and enterprise settings, there are workarounds for that. This allows peer-to-peer applications such as VoIP, video conferencing, and the likes of BitTorrent to continue to work. However, if NAT is applied in the ISP network, it's likely that these applications, and possibly others, will no longer work well if at all. When this happens, these applications could move to IPv6 in order to keep working.

At that point, having IPv6 will be an advantage for those of us who want to run peer-to-peer applications or host services at home. For the ISPs, the advantage of offering IPv6 to their customers is that IPv6 traffic bypasses the CGNs, so fewer of those expensive boxes are necessary. Although today's effort doesn't have many immediate advantages, having a good amount of content available over IPv6 will start saving ISPs money within one or two years.

For website operators, the advantages of supporting IPv6 are a little less clear-cut. But with no CGNs in the middle, serving content to users over IPv6 could end up being faster and more reliable. Blocking users and reporting abuse is also a lot easier because users can be identified by (the first part of) their IPv6 address, rather than hide in the midst of their fellow CGN users. If ISPs make a single CGN cover a large geographic area, a CGN could also effectively hide the geolocation of the users behind it. In that case, IPv6 could allow a website operator to determine a user's location more precisely and reliably, which can be useful for advertising purposes.

So today's event is important as a big step toward IPv6 as a repair mechanism to fix IPv4 problems looming on the horizon. It's a bit like an oil change—it doesn't make your car run better today, but it sure helps prevent it from running a lot worse in the future.

Why do they keep flogging this dead horse. After almost twenty years of sales pitches, and three or four "World IPv6" days, only a small fraction of one percent of internet traffic is using IPv6. Because they made the amazingly colossal boner of an error of not making IPv6 backward compatible with IPv4, you have the classic chicken and egg dilemma. Any website that converts essentially disappears from the internet, because no end users are on IPv6, and no end user will convert because there's no content out there on IPv6, so why bother. This ridiculous claim that the IPv4 space is "out of addresses" is a red herring. Using NAT has increased the IPv4 space from the original 4 billion to over 64 trillion addresses. The problem is already solved while still using IPv4. Plus IPv6 breaks virtually all network security by allowing viruses to tunnel out using layer 3 encryption. The conversion is a high-risk, high cost endeavor, and when you're done, you have NOTHING to show for it, other than kudos for political correctness. This horse is DEAD guys, stop beating it. What we need is a new IPv8, that uses a double IPv4 header, and remains backwards compatible.

Cool, now all we need is an article telling us Windows users how to make sure we're on board with the IPv6 future...

SirOmega wrote:

I googled to see if my DDWRT router could support IPv6. The instructions were incredibly long and involved SSHing into the router. Uh no thanks.

I've got a DD-WRT router too, and I've looked it up and I don't think it's *that* difficult, most of what you need to do can be done by checking a box and copying some config scripts into the dialogue boxes. The problem is, it's all different depending on whether your ISP assigns you an IPv6 prefix or if you need to get one through a tunnel broker, and it is a bit intimidating to look at, and I think requires that your OS be configured properly to begin with or you'll never see the IPv6 internet anyways.

My whole stack is ready to go IPv6 except for my Cisco/Linksys E3000 (including modem and ISP). This is disappointing because it's a modern, fairly new router that could easily support it with a firmware update. I don't understand why they are the furthest back on the curve. I guess I will just have to join the fun a little later.

Why do they keep flogging this dead horse. After almost twenty years of sales pitches, and three or four "World IPv6" days, only a small fraction of one percent of internet traffic is using IPv6. Because they made the amazingly colossal boner of an error of not making IPv6 backward compatible with IPv4, you have the classic chicken and egg dilemma. Any website that converts essentially disappears from the internet, because no end users are on IPv6, and no end user will convert because there's no content out there on IPv6, so why bother. This ridiculous claim that the IPv4 space is "out of addresses" is a red herring. Using NAT has increased the IPv4 space from the original 4 billion to over 64 trillion addresses. The problem is already solved while still using IPv4. Plus IPv6 breaks virtually all network security by allowing viruses to tunnel out using layer 3 encryption. The conversion is a high-risk, high cost endeavor, and when you're done, you have NOTHING to show for it, other than kudos for political correctness. This horse is DEAD guys, stop beating it. What we need is a new IPv8, that uses a double IPv4 header, and remains backwards compatible.

Wow speaking of dead horses, yours is full of crap.

"Backwards compatible"? Harder to do than just switch.

"Disappears from the Internet"? I can still get to Facebook today just fine from both an IPv4-only and an IPv6 network.

"NAT...64 trillion addresses"? Pull another one.

"Double IPv4 header"? How about instead of ranting about things you clearly have no idea about, you read up on how v6 works and give it a try yourself.

I've been dual-stack at home for over a year, and other than some oddness with a firewall upgrade and DHCP (*v4!*) everything has worked perfectly fine.

And what on Earth are you so angry about? Things moving forward? Having to learn something new?

Why do they keep flogging this dead horse. After almost twenty years of sales pitches, and three or four "World IPv6" days, only a small fraction of one percent of internet traffic is using IPv6. Because they made the amazingly colossal boner of an error of not making IPv6 backward compatible with IPv4, you have the classic chicken and egg dilemma. Any website that converts essentially disappears from the internet, because no end users are on IPv6, and no end user will convert because there's no content out there on IPv6, so why bother. This ridiculous claim that the IPv4 space is "out of addresses" is a red herring. Using NAT has increased the IPv4 space from the original 4 billion to over 64 trillion addresses. The problem is already solved while still using IPv4. Plus IPv6 breaks virtually all network security by allowing viruses to tunnel out using layer 3 encryption. The conversion is a high-risk, high cost endeavor, and when you're done, you have NOTHING to show for it, other than kudos for political correctness. This horse is DEAD guys, stop beating it. What we need is a new IPv8, that uses a double IPv4 header, and remains backwards compatible.

NAT is already widely used in homes and enterprise networks to share one or a few "real" IPv4 addresses between several or even quite a lot of IP-capable devices. A side-effect of NAT is that incoming connections are no longer possible, but in consumer and enterprise settings, there are workarounds for that. This allows peer-to-peer applications such as VoIP, video conferencing, and the likes of BitTorrent to continue to work. However, if NAT is applied in the ISP network, it's likely that these applications, and possibly others, will no longer work well if at all. When this happens, these applications could move to IPv6 in order to keep working.

NAT is rather a show-stopper for me. My understanding is that NAT is simply not possible with IPv6, there are so many addresses that it was not thought necessary. But my home network will die without it and I don't know if ISPs are going to give out more than 1 of those trillions of IPv6 addresses to any customer. So potentially IPv6 offers no advantages whatsoever and a host of disadvantages.

NAT is already widely used in homes and enterprise networks to share one or a few "real" IPv4 addresses between several or even quite a lot of IP-capable devices. A side-effect of NAT is that incoming connections are no longer possible, but in consumer and enterprise settings, there are workarounds for that. This allows peer-to-peer applications such as VoIP, video conferencing, and the likes of BitTorrent to continue to work. However, if NAT is applied in the ISP network, it's likely that these applications, and possibly others, will no longer work well if at all. When this happens, these applications could move to IPv6 in order to keep working.

NAT is rather a show-stopper for me. My understanding is that NAT is simply not possible with IPv6, there are so many addresses that it was not thought necessary. But my home network will die without it and I don't know if ISPs are going to give out more than 1 of those trillions of IPv6 addresses to any customer. So potentially IPv6 offers no advantages whatsoever and a host of disadvantages.

But they don't just give you 1 IPV6 address, they give you 2**64 of them. They give you the top 64 bits, a prefix, and you then have a few approved ways to sort out the addresses within your home network within that 2**64 addresses available. Companies get a prefix of only 56 bits of prefix giving them the possibility of 256 subnets each with 2**64 addresses

What about firewalls and routers for the home? Near as I can tell, most routers out there today do not have any kind of firewall that isn't NAT related, and NAT is only working with IPv4.

While I know there's a trillion trillion addresses and it'll 'take forever' for someone to portscan them all, it leaves my computers wide open. This has been proven over and over as a bad idea.

Are there any hardware routers out there that have a true IPv6 firewall? I'm not finding them.

My Netgear WN3700 will do IPv6, and it appears my ISP has a 4to6 gateway right now if google isn't lying (they won't say anything, but people are posting Centurylink's 4to6 gateway number and I pass the ipv6 test if I use it)

NAT is already widely used in homes and enterprise networks to share one or a few "real" IPv4 addresses between several or even quite a lot of IP-capable devices. A side-effect of NAT is that incoming connections are no longer possible, but in consumer and enterprise settings, there are workarounds for that. This allows peer-to-peer applications such as VoIP, video conferencing, and the likes of BitTorrent to continue to work. However, if NAT is applied in the ISP network, it's likely that these applications, and possibly others, will no longer work well if at all. When this happens, these applications could move to IPv6 in order to keep working.

NAT is rather a show-stopper for me. My understanding is that NAT is simply not possible with IPv6, there are so many addresses that it was not thought necessary. But my home network will die without it and I don't know if ISPs are going to give out more than 1 of those trillions of IPv6 addresses to any customer. So potentially IPv6 offers no advantages whatsoever and a host of disadvantages.

But they don't just give you 1 IPV6 address, they give you 2**64 of them. They give you the top 64 bits, a prefix, and you then have a few approved ways to sort out the addresses within your home network within that 2**64 addresses available. Companies get a prefix of only 56 bits of prefix giving them the possibility of 256 subnets each with 2**64 addresses

Just agreeing with the above: any ISP that tries to limit to one address per connection will get publicly crucified when Grandma gets a fridge that needs network connectivity and it doesn't work. no percentage in it for the ISP.

NAT is already widely used in homes and enterprise networks to share one or a few "real" IPv4 addresses between several or even quite a lot of IP-capable devices. A side-effect of NAT is that incoming connections are no longer possible, but in consumer and enterprise settings, there are workarounds for that. This allows peer-to-peer applications such as VoIP, video conferencing, and the likes of BitTorrent to continue to work. However, if NAT is applied in the ISP network, it's likely that these applications, and possibly others, will no longer work well if at all. When this happens, these applications could move to IPv6 in order to keep working.

NAT is rather a show-stopper for me. My understanding is that NAT is simply not possible with IPv6, there are so many addresses that it was not thought necessary. But my home network will die without it and I don't know if ISPs are going to give out more than 1 of those trillions of IPv6 addresses to any customer. So potentially IPv6 offers no advantages whatsoever and a host of disadvantages.

But they don't just give you 1 IPV6 address, they give you 2**64 of them. They give you the top 64 bits, a prefix, and you then have a few approved ways to sort out the addresses within your home network within that 2**64 addresses available.

It doesn't. The IPs are publicly routable, but still rely on the router's firewall to get there. Everything is still blocked unless you open it. Just no more private-only IPs, which will be great for gaming.

Most ipv6 routers I'd think will be pretty set it and forget it just using dhcp6 from your ISP.

Why do they keep flogging this dead horse. After almost twenty years of sales pitches, and three or four "World IPv6" days, only a small fraction of one percent of internet traffic is using IPv6. Because they made the amazingly colossal boner of an error of not making IPv6 backward compatible with IPv4, you have the classic chicken and egg dilemma. Any website that converts essentially disappears from the internet, because no end users are on IPv6, and no end user will convert because there's no content out there on IPv6, so why bother. This ridiculous claim that the IPv4 space is "out of addresses" is a red herring. Using NAT has increased the IPv4 space from the original 4 billion to over 64 trillion addresses. The problem is already solved while still using IPv4. Plus IPv6 breaks virtually all network security by allowing viruses to tunnel out using layer 3 encryption. The conversion is a high-risk, high cost endeavor, and when you're done, you have NOTHING to show for it, other than kudos for political correctness. This horse is DEAD guys, stop beating it. What we need is a new IPv8, that uses a double IPv4 header, and remains backwards compatible.

Thanks for getting this strawman out of the way right away. Perfect example of wrong info.

It doesn't. The IPs are publicly routable, but still rely on the router's firewall to get there. Everything is still blocked unless you open it. Just no more private-only IPs, which will be great for gaming.

Most ipv6 routers I'd think will be pretty set it and forget it just using dhcp6 from your ISP.

I don't think dhcp6 is approved of really although it works fine. The approved way IIRC is that your pc os generates a 64 bit random number or a number made up from the MAC address of the pvc and concatenates that with the prefix as the public address.

What about firewalls and routers for the home? Near as I can tell, most routers out there today do not have any kind of firewall that isn't NAT related, and NAT is only working with IPv4.

You've got it backward. NAT requires a stateful firewall to work, but NAT is not needed for a firewall to function. Any router with NAT already has a built-in stateful firewall, so you're all set. If your router supports IPV6, then the firewall should support IPV6 as well.

It doesn't. The IPs are publicly routable, but still rely on the router's firewall to get there. Everything is still blocked unless you open it. Just no more private-only IPs, which will be great for gaming.

Most ipv6 routers I'd think will be pretty set it and forget it just using dhcp6 from your ISP.

I don't think dhcp6 is approved of really although it works fine. The approved way IIRC is that your pc os generates a 64 bit random number or a number made up from the MAC address of the pvc and concatenates that with the prefix as the public address.

It doesn't. The IPs are publicly routable, but still rely on the router's firewall to get there. Everything is still blocked unless you open it. Just no more private-only IPs, which will be great for gaming.

Most ipv6 routers I'd think will be pretty set it and forget it just using dhcp6 from your ISP.

I don't think dhcp6 is approved of really although it works fine. The approved way IIRC is that your pc os generates a 64 bit random number or a number made up from the MAC address of the pvc and concatenates that with the prefix as the public address.

Optimally ISPs should be doing router advertisements with the "other" flag enabled, at which point a dhcp server hands out supplementary info such as DNS servers and domain suffixes. They can go even more managed by flipping the managed flag as well and leaving routing adverts to simply prefixes and router locations.

Well as a geek, having a /48 is cool for vlans and multiple networks at home. If you think about it multiple networks make sense for the normal home user too for guest wifi, etc. I think I read that /54 is a recommendation now since really no one needs a /48...especially a home user

Has is been a year already since IPv6 Day? Crazy. Feels like just yesterday I was bringing in a chocolate cake to work with "IPv6 Day" written in icing on the top. (We were all working on IPv6-related stuff at the time.)

The lady at Publix had no idea what IPv6 was of course, which made getting a cake for it all the more fun. Good times.

Well as a geek, having a /48 is cool for vlans and multiple networks at home. If you think about it multiple networks make sense for the normal home user too for guest wifi, etc. I think I read that /54 is a recommendation now since really no one needs a /48...especially a home user

Well in reality I'm pretty sure every home user would be fine with 8 bit address space - I mean who has more than 200 internet capable devices in their home? Even if we start giving IP addresses to ovens and fridges that should be enough

But then with so many addresses it's not as if we'd have to care about such small details like a few hundred million addresses.

What about firewalls and routers for the home? Near as I can tell, most routers out there today do not have any kind of firewall that isn't NAT related, and NAT is only working with IPv4.

While I know there's a trillion trillion addresses and it'll 'take forever' for someone to portscan them all, it leaves my computers wide open. This has been proven over and over as a bad idea.

Are there any hardware routers out there that have a true IPv6 firewall? I'm not finding them.

My Netgear WN3700 will do IPv6, and it appears my ISP has a 4to6 gateway right now if google isn't lying (they won't say anything, but people are posting Centurylink's 4to6 gateway number and I pass the ipv6 test if I use it)

You brought up a very important point about firewall on IPv6. Guess what, firewall software makers will love to sell you one. Problem with upgrading one technology is you often ended up having to upgrade other parts.

Personally, I like NAT method of 1st layer of firewall defense because I don't have to deal with many devices on the network like PS3, X360, etc. Now with IPv6, people have to deal with the problem if they even aware of it at all. Since it will take a while for everyone that has IPv6 to bring their security (assuming they even know what to do) up to date again, hackers will try to hack many open IPv6 machines out there.

Another issue with old IPv4 software or old IPv4 based devices that don't have new replacement. IPv6 to IPv4 bridge will be needed.

It doesn't. The IPs are publicly routable, but still rely on the router's firewall to get there. Everything is still blocked unless you open it. Just no more private-only IPs, which will be great for gaming.

Most ipv6 routers I'd think will be pretty set it and forget it just using dhcp6 from your ISP.

I used to hate NAT until I started using it all the time. After a while I got used to it, and it gives me a feeling of added security, as wrong headed as that may be. Bottom line is my network is hidden from the world, though, and the ISP treats all connections as if they come from one place.

This does have a few downsides, but I've been living with them for 12 years or so, and they don't really bother me anymore. Having to forward a port here and there is not that hard. I will have to open a port anyway with ipv6, right? I honestly think NAT works pretty well.

I guess the advantage NAT has over ipv6 is that it's simply not possible to make the boneheaded mistake of letting everything into your network. Yes, I know, NAT is not a firewall, but it sure comes close. You know what people do when connectivity doesn't work on their PCs? They turn off the firewall, and try again. If that works, they leave the firewall off. Guess what they will do when Starcraft 4 doesn't work on ipv6? Turn off the firewall on their ipv6 router, and try again. And they will forget to turn it back on.

I guarantee that ipv6, if ever fully implemented, will result in more wide open networks. It's simply a fact that if it is easier to open a network, it will happen more often. NAT was not really designed to provide this benefit, but it did. And ip configuration was never intended to be done by lay users...but it now is. Combine those two facts, and you are going down an ugly road.

Now, I certainly am no technophobe, and it doesn't make sense to be against 128bit addresses just because it makes the internet more addressable, leading to an "ideal" of one address per device. In theory I think that is preferable to the current situation. But NAT has existed as a de facto firewall for many years now, and ipv6 will change that. It suddenly creates the very real possibility of wide open networks.

One solution would be disallowing "open" hosts on consumer grade routers. The only option would be to open ports for specific addresses, similar to NAT forwarding requirements today. A lesser version of this would be allowing "open" hosts, but only by entering each address--that is, no "completely open" firewall. I don't even like this solution, because I don't like my routers limiting me, but maybe it is necessary.

The bottom line is, routers need to be as hard to "open" for 99% of consumers, as it is for them to stop using NAT (impossible). Otherwise, internet security will get worse.

My other issue with ipv6 is I believe the standard should have handled backwards compatibility better. The ipv6 internet should have superseded the ipv4 internet, while still being able to address it. Eventually, as ipv4 users realized there were newer hosts with only ipv6 addresses, they would find the need to upgrade. Yet anyone who moved to ipv6 would still be able to access ipv4 through translation at specialized gateways. In theory, this is still somewhat possible with ipv6, of course. But this wasn't part of the plan from the beginning. As a result, no one is willing to turn of ipv4 for fear of losing connectivity to the ipv4 internet.

There is a lot of talk about dual stacks working "just fine." But really, what is needed is ipv6 only stacks. No serious corporation is going to turn off ipv4 until the whole world is on ipv6 (my guess would be 20 years from now). No user is going to accept ipv6 only addresses unless most of the servers are 100% ipv6 capable (my guess would be 10 years from now). A user would be better off with NAT behind NAT behind NAT than ipv6 today.

IPV6 adoption MUST be forced by ISPs. When consumers have no choice but ipv6, this will drive ipv6 compatibility at the server levels. Years later, this will allow IPSs to turn off ipv4. Finally, this will allow servers to turn of ipv4.

The problem is, ISPs don't ever have to force ipv6 on their users. There are too many NAT solutions that will allow them to delay, which will delay the very slow process that I outlined above.

I haven't even mentioned the issues with internal legacy software that requires ipv4 and will never work with ipv6. So ipv4 internally is probably here to stay...which means ipv4 over vpns is probably here to stay as well. Aw, well.

Lest you think otherwise, I was very excited when I heard of ipv6 and have been using it as early as possible. Years ago I got my first tunnels working through Hurricane Electric with a freebsd router and a windows 2000 client. Yet for some reason I have lost my love for the protocol. One thing I will miss is the short, memorizable addresses.

Iljitsch van Beijnum / Iljitsch is a contributing writer at Ars Technica, where he contributes articles about network protocols as well as Apple topics. He is currently finishing his Ph.D work at the telematics department at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) in Spain.